Texas Legislature

The Texas Ethics Commission has fined former state senator and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Wendy Davis $5,000 after finding “credible evidence” that she failed to include her relationship with two lobbyists on financial disclosure forms filed during her 2012 senate re-election campaign.

The commission issued an order detailing its findings and the fine on Thursday, nearly three years after a complaint was filed by Davis’ Republican opponent, Mark Shelton, who narrowly lost the election to Davis by two percentage points.

Shelton complained that Davis’s personal financial documents for 2010 and 2011 did not properly indicate that her law partner, Brian Newby, was a registered lobbyist. The firm’s unpaid executive director, Marcy Weldin Foster, was also a registered lobbyist in 2011, and that was not disclosed.

Based on incident reports gathered from various Texas cities, there were more 200 fatal shootings of animals in 2014. It’s been argued that many of these dog shooting were unnecessary and could have been prevented had the police officer had been trained to deal with dogs more effectively.

A bill that passed out of the Texas Senate on Thursday would require all police departments use state guidelines if they are using body cameras to monitor their officers’ activities. The legislation by Dallas Democratic Sen. Royce West is in response to the growing number of police shootings throughout the country, which, he said, have eroded how people feel about the criminal justice system, specifically as it relates to law enforcement.

January 19 is General Robert E. Lee's birthday. It’s also the date of an official Texas state holiday Confederate Heroes Day. This year it happened to also be the date of the national Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday.